Two miles in front of us, the entire town seemed to burn, though it was really only the remnants of a freight train. Better than twenty cars had derailed, most filled with ethanol. The fire had been burning for two days now. All of the town’s 350 residents had been evacuated, though only two houses had burned so far. When I was doing a door to door search, I’d found this guy standing in his backyard watching the fire. He adamantly hadn’t wanted to leave.

Now here he was, flashing tin and demanding entry.

“That badge give you arrest powers? Or just free sodas and maybe some pussy every now and again?”

He gripped the wheel of his minivan so hard I thought he’d tear it off. “You son of a bitch. You can kiss the sergeants’ promotion goodbye.”

“Tee it up.” She tossed the ice cream over her shoulder and in three steps crossed the room. She slapped him hard enough to bloody his lips. “Lucky for me that train derailed, I guess, huh?”

He blinked rapidly, his wheels turning. “I…I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. How’d you get into my house?”

“’Cause otherwise, we’d still be going at it, wouldn’t we? Well, you’d be going at it. A little hard for me to participate, being drugged and tied up and all.”

During that last search I’d found her in his basement. Bound and suspended from the ceiling. Naked. Bruised. Crying. Dried semen in her hair and red welts on her ass.

“I thought I was going to die. But you came back. We – “ She indicated me. “Knew you would. One last hurrah before you split, huh?”

“I bet he was going to drug you and drive your ass out of here,” I said. “Take you to some new place. We’d have never found you again.”

His badge was lighter than mine, as though it were just trifle rather than a real thing. “You people,” I said. “Fucking holster sniffers. Don’t have the balls to do the actual job.”

Magnarelli smirked. “Gonna lecture her, too? Bitch didn’t look at me until she saw the badge. Made her as wet as a fire hydrant.”

She punched him. His nose exploded, blood covered his shirt and carpet. She hauled him to his feet and dragged him toward the basement stairs.

“Deputy.” His voice was as wobbly as an old man. “You can’t let her do this.”

She balanced him precariously on the edge of the first step for a heartbeat, then pushed. He fell like stone. Tied and unable to break his fall, he bounced down the stairs and slammed into the concrete floor. Somewhere in that fall, I heard a bone snap.

“My leg’s broken. Help. Heeeeeeeelp.”

I headed out of the house. A broken leg was a stroke of luck. That way, when someone eventually found the body, an autopsy would show an accident. A man – with a predilection for kidnapping young woman and raping them repeatedly while they were tied in his basement – fell down his stairs and broke his leg. There was simply nothing he could do to save himself when the fires came.

I looked back, saw her pull out a Zippo lighter and flick it once, just like I’d shown her.

It flashed to life and for a split-second, the flame was the color of tin.

About Trey R. Barker

"Blah blah blah pizza job and blah blah reporter job and blah blah blah. The good stuff is that Down And Out Books just snagged from Trey his entire ouvre of Barefield, Texas crime novels. The first, 2005's 2,000 Miles To Open Road, has just been released (through all the normal outlets, but start at Down and Out's website) while the sequel, Exit Blood,' will hit your ereader in the second half of 2012. Who knows how many there will be after that, but all will feature that stripped down, barebones, west Texas writing his fans have come to expect. His other recent books are the non-fiction The Cancer Chronicles and the crime collectionRemembrance and Regrets. His short fiction has been everywhere but this year has been mostly flash in venues such as Shotgun Honey, Flash Fiction Offensive, and Thrillers, Chillers 'n' Killers. Find him at treyrbarker.com.

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Established in 2011, Shotgun Honey provides crime fiction lovers a regular diet of flash fiction. Living by the simple tenet of keeping it lean and mean, Shotgun Honey has published over 800 flash fiction stories from more than 400 authors from around the world.